


Bullet Points

by fwooshy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Agoraphobia, Azkaban, M/M, Malfoy Manor (Harry Potter), Paper Products, Stationary, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28566549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwooshy/pseuds/fwooshy
Summary: Draco makes lists. They're mostly about Harry Potter.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	Bullet Points

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [DivinityInMotion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivinityInMotion) for the beta!

Draco makes lists.

Draco makes lists before Christmas. Broomstick, chocolate bonbons, an owl. A jewelled clasp with the body of a snake, for his cloak. For Harry Potter to fuck off and die. Each wish printed on parchment embossed with the Malfoy crest; each wish sealed with a Malfoy's prayer.

Draco makes lists in Azkaban; each item inked intentionally in the ledgers of his mind. Cold, alone, maggots. Damp, rigid, unyielding. Shrieks. Cold. Alone. Draco clings to his lists when the void sweeps close, chants, like a prayer: sunshine after a rain, summers in Paris, the lake below with the wind on his back. He repeats them until his tongue garbles them together into a shrill freak of a memory. Then the shadows pass, and the other lists come flooding in uninvited: Vincent Crabbe, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore. Charity Burbage, Thorfinn Rowle, Madam Rosmerta. Katie Bell, Ron Weasley, Harry Potter. Harry Potter, his mother, Harry Potter.

It's Harry Potter who retrieves him when he's released. It's Harry Potter who Apparates him to the Manor and leaves him in the company of house-elves. It's Harry Potter in his lists tonight: Gryffindor vs Slytherin second match third year, Gryffindor vs Slytherin first match fourth year, _Potter Stinks_. Sectumsempra, his mother's lie, broomback in a burning room, testimonials.

The house-elves bring tea and toast. Draco tosses the dishes aside and limps to the library. He digs through weeks of papers, searching for his family like rummaging through rubble for remains. Splashed centrefold is the blood of his father. They bury his mother under a column halfway down page three. Between them, they have ten and two years.

The paper says that Harry Potter sat through three days of trials. In the photo, Harry looks like a monster. His eyes are downcast and half-hidden behind hair. At a glance, all there is to him is that scowl.

The papers say, three days to shorten a three-year sentence into a week. No Death Eater deserves the immaculate compassion of our Hero, however gracious He is to proffer it.

Harry Potter is not gracious. Draco already has a hundred bullets written on parchment as proof. He tacks this list up on a wall in the room where Voldemort slept. The parchment covers a Nagini-shaped hole, black ink proclaiming: "Harry Potter was a cowardly asshole when he hit me with a snowball under his Invisibility Cloak. I bruised for days."

Draco's face hurt looking at it, but something tells him that this kind of hurt is a good feeling, so he goes back the next day and wallpapers the entire room in lines starting with, "Harry Potter was a mean-spirited wanker" and "Harry Potter was a dim-witted troll". His mouth strains all day, and his head feels so light he thinks it'd fly out the window when he isn't paying attention.

Draco makes a new list the next day. Fresh parchment, soft quills, ink smooth as silk. Sitting at the desk by the window and looking out at the fog so thick it's like there's nothing in the world but him. He's safe here. Grounded.

Draco makes a name for himself in the parchment industry through mail-orders and custom designs. Muggle fever sweeps the wizarding world. Along with it comes wedding fever, and along that comes Save-the-Dates and RSVPs and menus and guest books and place cards and a million other parchment products that Draco has no clue about because he doesn't get the paper anymore, but he writes for them all the same. Draco has impeccable penmanship and a penchant for lists, so his orders come in heavy year-round, year-after-year until even the Granger-Weasleys request his services for their pending nuptials.

Their request is polite and formal and written in Hermione Granger's smart hand. The parchment smells of soap and the ink is the kind they use to print books. Draco makes two lists and draws a line between them. If he takes the request, he'll have steady customers for decades to come. If he doesn't, he'll be safe. No—no, they'll be slighted, and then the public will come to the Manor gates with their wands raised. So he doesn't have a choice.

He writes back accepting their offer and makes a note to refuse their Galleons when they come. Then he walks down the hall to Nagini's room, where he marks a check next to Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger's name, under the list of "Those Who are Owed Favours". There are five checkmarks next to Luna Lovegood's name; three next to Theodore Lupin. Only Harry Potter's name remains unchecked.

Harry Potter rings the Manor at noon the next day. Draco meets him at the gates because he doesn't want Harry Potter to come inside. Inside are thousands of lists of which no small portion contains Harry Potter's name. Inside is as safe as Draco's mind, where Harry Potter doesn't belong.

"What do you think you're doing?" Harry Potter accuses.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Draco replies.

"Oh, come on," Harry Potter says softer, but no less threatening.

Draco shivers. He remembers the Granger-Weasley request and scowls. "Your friends wanted _me_ . _I_ didn't ask them. _I'm_ not doing anything wrong."

It's not how Draco imagines their first conversation going. His list has items like: "awkward conversation about the weather", or "relaying the knowledge that my mother died in Azkaban", or even the painfully hopeful, "spur-of-the-moment apology accepted; invitation for future correspondence received".

"You shouldn't have accepted!" Harry bellows.

Draco shivers again, and this time he can't stop. He's come out in a thin green robe and silk slippers, because he doesn't know where all the other clothes are, and he hasn't been outside in years.

"We better go inside," Harry says, his eyes soft though he's still frowning.

"No." Draco's chattering teeth clench to a halt.

"What? We can't talk out here. You'll freeze in that."

"You're not coming inside," Draco insists, panic seizing the words in his throat. But he relents when Harry's eyes darken.

They walk down a hall of a hundred reasons why Harry Potter won the war, past a hundred times Draco bested Harry in potions, a hundred ways the world would be better without the Weasleys, a hundred ways the world would be worse without Muggles. Harry walks through it all, his wand emitting pink and purple sparks that look so pretty that Draco almost thinks them friendly. They stop before Draco's desk. Harry bends over to run his wand over parchment stacks and inkwells and little bits of lace and ribbon and pressed flowers until finally, he stands up, satisfied if not exactly pleased.

"You have excellent penmanship," Harry says once, very slowly, before leaving Draco to his lists once more.

Draco knows he should burn the lists. He stays up until dawn instead, writing up Reasons Why Harry Potter Paid A Visit, Reasons Why Harry Potter Might Stop By Again, Ways to Keep Harry Potter Away. He has them on his desk when Harry comes the next morning. Harry picks up one of them and points at the P in Potter. "It's very nice," he compliments, which is so utterly bizarre that Draco writes up four new lists the very second Harry steps out of the Manor.

Draco stops thinking about burning the lists. Whatever Harry thinks of them, he doesn't seem to mind them, because he comes the next week, and the next, and the next, for whatever reason unbeknownst to Draco.

Draco tries showing Harry samples for the Granger-Weasley affair (reason number 4 on "Why Harry Potter might pay a visit"), but Harry only puts a hand over his eyes, saying, "Don't spoil me!" 

So then Draco tries reason number 5 (Harry Potter is itching for a fight), but when he goes for a taunt, all that comes out is — "Your specs are crooked again." To which Harry says, "Oh, really?", and Draco says, "Yes, really," and fixes them with a tender bit of impromptu wandwork. 

Harry doesn't even flinch when Draco takes out his wand, so Draco is left with one reason left: Malfoy Manor holds some dark artefact that Harry Potter is trying to find.

Harry looks for it in the rhododendrons. He looks for it beneath shady oak trees between bites of meat pie. He looks for it in the sunset from the Manor roof, looks for it until the darkness sweeps in and the wind picks up.

They're sitting on a blanket somewhere on the grounds. The fog's so thick around them that Draco can barely make out Harry's face. Harry's looking out into the mist, searching like he always is. Harry's charmed them warm, so Draco's teeth don't chatter when he says, "I don't have it. Whatever you're looking for, I don't have it."

Harry turns to Draco. "Don't have what?"

Draco scoffs. "Don't play dumb. I know you're looking for it. But I don't know where it is, I swear. I've even asked the house-elves, and they say it's not here. I swear I'm telling the truth."

"I'm not playing dumb," Harry smiles, amused. "I have no idea what you're going on about."

"I _swear_. You can look in my head if you don't believe me."

"Oh." Harry places a hand over his chest. "This is reason number 34, isn't it. You think I'm looking for a dark artefact."

"I don't have it," Draco squirms, shifting his legs like he's guilty, even though he knows he's not.

Harry laughs. "Of course, you don't. I'm not looking for that at all. Merlin, Draco. I knew you weren't dealing in dark magic the second I walked down the hall. Anyone who's that open about their feelings isn't hiding anything, least of all a dark artefact."

"That's not true," Draco insists.

"You _are_ hiding a dark artefact?" Harry says, still smiling, almost like he's—he's _teasing_ Draco.

"No," Draco says sulkily, although he doesn't elaborate. He's not open about his feelings at all. But he can't explain why he let Harry walk through the Manor like that. He can't explain why he never burned the lists.

Draco chooses a thick-tipped quill that night. He writes, "My penmanship—particularly the way I write his family name. The care with which I fixed his spectacles. The way he can read me like an open list." He takes out another sheath of parchment and sniffs it before smoothing it over his desk. "Safe. Warm. Alive."

When Harry comes the next week, he brings fresh flowers (number five on Favourite Things), and Draco thinks of his mother without wanting to die.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 💛 You can find me on [dw](https://fwooshy.dreamwidth.org/) and [tumblr](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
